First Term at Malory Towers Read Online Free PDF

now to think she'd got to plait it. Why, she didn't even know how to plait! Gwendoline was so lost in sulky thought that she hardly answered any of the maths, questions.
    The morning went on. Break came and the girls rushed out to play where they liked. Some went for a quick game on one of the many tennis-courts. Some went for a ramble in the grounds. Others lay about in the Court, talking. Darrell would have liked to go with Alicia, but she was with Betty, and Darrell felt sure they wouldn't want a third person. She looked at the other new girls. Two of them, whom she didn't know, had made friends already. Another girl, who had a cousin in the same form, went off with her. Gwendoline was not to be seen. Perhaps she had gone to plait her hair!
    Sally Hope was sitting on the grass alone, no expression at all on her closed-up face. Darrell went over to her. “What do you think of Malory Towers?” she said. “I think it's fine.”
    Sally looked up primly. “It's not bad,” she said.
    “Were you sorry to leave your other school?” asked Darrell. “I wanted to come to Malory, of course, but I hated leaving all my friends. Didn't you hate leaving all your friends too?”
    “I don't think I had any, really,” said Sally, considering. Darrell thought that was queer. It was hard to get anything out of Sally. She was polite and answered questions, but she didn't ask any in return.
    “ Well, I hope I don't have to make her my friend!” thought Darrell, at last. “Gracious, here's Gwendoline! Does she think she's plaited her hair? It's all undone already!”
    “Is my hair all right?” said Gwendoline, in a plaintive voice. “I've tried and tried to plait it. It was beastly of Miss Potts not to let me wear it as I've always worn it. I don't like her.”
    “Let me plait it for you,” said Darrell, jumping up. “It doesn't look to me as if you know how to plait, Gwendoline!”
    She plaited the golden hair deftly and quickly into long braids and tied ends with bits of narrow ribbon.
    “There!” she said, swinging Gwendoline round to look at her. “You look much nicer!”
    Gwendoline scowled, and forgot to thank Darrell for her help. Actually, she did look much nicer now. “How spoilt she is!” thought Darrell. “Well, little as I want Sally for a friend, I want Gwendoline even less. I should want to slap her for all her silly airs and graces!”
    The bell went, and scores of girls raced in to their classrooms. Darrell raced too. She knew where her classroom was. She knew the names of a lot of her form. She would soon be quite at home at Malory Towers!

The first week goes by
    DARRELL soon began to settle down. She learnt the names not only of the girls in her form at North Tower, but of every girl there, from the head-girl Pamela, down to Mary-Lou, the youngest but one in the first form. Darrell herself was the youngest girl in North Tower, she found, but she felt that Mary-Lou was very much younger
    Mary-Lou was a scared mouse of a girl. She was frightened of mice, beetles, thunderstorms, noises at night, the dark, and a hundred other things. Poor Mary-Lou. No wonder she had big scared eyes. Darrell, not easily scared of anything, laughed when she saw poor Mary-Lou rush to the other side of the dormy because she saw an earwig on the floor.
    There were ten girls in the first-form dormy at North Tower. Katherine, the quiet head-girl. Alicia, the talkative unruly-tongued monkey. The three new girls, Darrell, Gwendoline, and Sally. Mary-Lou, with her big scared eyes, always ready to shy back like a nervous horse, at anything unexpected.
    Then there was clever Irene, a marvel at maths, and music, usually top of the form—but oh, how stupid in the ordinary things of life. If anyone lost her book it was Irene. If anyone went to the wrong classroom at the wrong time it was Irene. It was said that once she had gone to the art- room, thinking that a painting lesson was to be taken there, and had actually sat there for